By TED MILLER, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 20, 2004

See her there? The one with tattoos, sculpted arms, tightly braided cornrows and a permanent frown.

Yeah, that one. The one who seems to swagger even when she runs down the court; the one who just slashed through the lane like a feral dog, twisted around the giants under the basket and somehow coaxed her ball to kiss high off the glass and drop impertinently through the net.

That's Betty Lennox -- college nickname, "Psycho." She's got a reputation that would earn street cred even in the NBA, where bad behavior can become a marketing strategy.

We prefer our female athletes to play nice, though Lennox don't play that.

That's why the Storm is the 5-foot-8 two-guard's fourth pro team. That's why the 2000 WNBA Rookie of the Year lasted until the sixth selection of this year's dispersal draft.

A Storm player called Lennox a sore loser. Said she was hard to approach. Outspoken. Intimidating.

That assessment was supplied by Lennox herself.

Of course, you can't believe everything you hear about her. Lennox said that, too.

"I've grown a lot as a person," she said. "People who knew me before (college) and who know me now will tell you it's a night-and-day change.

"Don't base everything on what's been said or written about Betty Lennox. Those people don't know the real me. You've got to judge for yourself about who I am now."

Who she is now is the Storm's No. 3 scorer (11.6 points per game), No. 2 rebounder (5.4 rebounds per game) and a frontrunner for the WNBA's Most Improved Player award. Before a broken nose on June 22 upset her rhythm, she was arguably the team's most consistent player behind superstar Lauren Jackson, shooting nearly 50 percent from the field and earning a new nickname: B-Money.

"I believe Betty is misunderstood," said Storm assistant Jenny Boucek, who worked with Lennox when both were with the now-defunct Miami Sol. "She's got a heart of gold. She's one of my favorite players I've coached."

This is confusing. What about Lennox's acrimonious departure from Minnesota? Or her suspension for leaving the bench during a fight? Or her tumultuous but high-scoring tenure at Louisiana Tech? Or even her wild days as a junior college star after swaggering out of a cornfield in Oklahoma?

If you want to know what makes Lennox tick, and why she often appears to be two people inhabiting a wiry, female Allen Iverson body, the best place to start is in Hugo, Okla., population 5,500. Lennox, 27, grew up there with five brothers and three sisters working on a farm.

There were chickens and cows, peas to be picked and corn to be harvested. But the big money was in bales of hay.

Lennox said she started loading bales when she was 10. A bale weighs 30 to 40 pounds. Hurl 20 of them onto a truck, and an entire 80 cents is yours. Toss a few thousand from sunrise to sundown and that four cents per bale actually turned into paper money.

"But I didn't get that money," she said. "That was money that put food on our table. We'd always ask my mom when we were going to get paid and she always said, 'When you sit down and eat supper, that's your paycheck.'

"I was raised in a tough household -- very poor -- and fought for everything that I got. I was raised to not take anything lightly. That's why I'm appreciative of everything I have now."

Three things happened in that sweltering sun. Lennox learned about the hardest sort of hard labor. She also became competitive, constantly trying to prove that her small size didn't mean she couldn't do anything her burly brothers or anyone else could.

It also made her hard and feisty.

"I wasn't necessarily wild, but I liked to fight a lot," she said. "I had a short temper and a bad attitude. Not necessarily a bad attitude, but I didn't walk around smiling a lot. And I wouldn't say I do that now."

Old-school basketball

She started playing basketball the old-fashioned way. Literally. When she was in elementary school, girls in rural Oklahoma still played six-on-six -- three on offense, three on defense -- half-court hoops. Lennox, not surprisingly, stayed on the offensive side and dominated, often scoring as many as 60 points per contest.

After a move to Independence, Mo., she had to learn a new game -- real basketball. At first, she'd skid to a stop at midcourt, and her baffled teammates and coaches thought she was a complete rube.

The gibes ceased when her preternatural quickness and rabid aggressiveness transformed her into a scoring whirlwind. At her second junior college, Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, she won a national title, averaging 26.4 points per game, and attracted the attention of Louisiana Tech and legendary coach Leon Barmore, who had built a perennial national power in the backwoods of Ruston.

Lennox said she found religion and began changing for the better at Louisiana Tech. She admits, however, that the transformation wasn't immediate or without a few bumps along the way.

"(Barmore) got me when I was in the process of changing, but wasn't quite changed," she said. "If he was a little bit older when I was at Louisiana Tech, I probably would have given him a heart attack. The chip I had on my shoulder -- it was a nasty way to appear."

Clash of personalities

Barmore yanked her out of a game her junior year, and Lennox, irritated as much with herself as Barmore, went into the halftime locker room and wrote "Don't put me back in the game" on the coach's chalkboard.

Barmore read the suggestion and provided feedback by hurling an eraser across the room.

Theirs was a clash of stubborn personalities, but Barmore also knew he had one of the nation's most talented scorers and he built the offense around her.

After each dustup, he explained to Lennox that she, not he, was going to change.

Recounted Lennox, "He sat me over to the side and told me, 'Betty, believe it or not, I'm going to change you before you leave here. The way you act to get your way, you're not going to act that way anymore. You are going to play in my system. You are going to change as a person.' "

Lennox may have been frowning during her coach's frequent sermons, but she also was listening.

"It got to the point where I realized how ugly I looked and when I saw what my attitude did to me on the outside," she said.

Something clicked for Lennox. The Techsters won 21 consecutive games in 2000 and advanced to No. 2 in the national rankings before bowing out in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament against Penn State. Lennox averaged 18 points and six rebounds per game.

The Minnesota Lynx selected her with the sixth pick of the first round of the 2000 WNBA draft. After averaging 16.9 points and 5.6 rebounds per game, she was named Rookie of the Year. She also was the only rookie chosen by coaches for the All-Star game and the only first-year player named second-team All-WNBA.

Fall from favor

Then, while making a cut in the sixth game of the 2001 season, Lennox fell flat on her face. She had strained her left hip capsule and needed surgery.

Things spiraled downward after that. She struggled when she tried to return late in the season and grew increasingly frustrated with a move from shooting guard to point guard. Five games into 2002 -- three days after being suspended for a game after coming off the bench during an altercation -- she was traded to Miami, and the parting wasn't a happy one.

"To this day, I still don't see why I got traded," she said. "(Minnesota coach Brian Agler) portrayed to me that I was damaged goods. But I still don't believe that. The player they replaced me with didn't even play. I was very upset with that. When I see Brian Agler (now an assistant with Phoenix), it still kind of hurts me."

Minnesota fans weren't happy either. When the starting lineups were introduced before a game the day of the trade, fans chanted, "Betty! Betty! Betty!"

Lennox's once-promising career hit a quagmire. Her trademark quickness and leaping ability faded because of her injury and she lost her starting job. Her next two teams -- Miami and Cleveland -- folded. Her field goal percentage dropped to 36 percent and her scoring average fell below 12 points.

When the Storm picked her up, it appeared to be a risky move. Her health was an issue, but more worrisome was her potential to disrupt team chemistry.

At least, those were issues for pundits who didn't know Lennox. The Storm benefited from three coaches who previously had worked with her.

Storm's risks rewarded

"First-hand information is better than the rumor mill," said Storm coach Anne Donovan, who knew Lennox from 2002 national team tryouts. "Betty has unfairly been given a label."

Donovan, Boucek and assistant Jessie Kenlaw, a former assistant at Louisiana Tech, not only liked Lennox's ability to create shots off the dribble, they embraced her fiery competitiveness and passion for the game.

Lennox didn't play sweet, and that's exactly what the Storm needed.

"Right away she changed the image of the Storm from a talented but nice team," Donovan said. "We wanted to be a more aggressive, nastier team."

So it turns out that the frowning and slashing and gunning and scrapping are good things.

See her there? Take a closer look. She's the relaxed one, grinning and then cracking up talking about those crazy days of her youth while she enjoys a pleasant afternoon outside the Seattle Center.

She mostly regrets the tattoos, and the buff physique is due to maniacal dedication in the weight room. When basketball is done, she said she might try bodybuilding for a while to diversify her trophy case.

Turns out the Incorrigible Hoops Savant Formerly Known as Psycho is a psychology major, a plant manager for General Motors in the offseason and, as of 15 months ago, an excited first-time homeowner in Independence, Mo.

She'd like to stay in Seattle awhile, but she's not taking anything for granted.

She still speaks her mind. She still claws for every loose ball. She still lets out a howl when she's unhappy with her play.

She can play nice, though. Just not on the basketball court.

"The edge I have on the court is the edge I used to carry around at all times," she said. "Now I'm different. I've grown."